Footsteps
by ncfan
Summary: -Itachi, Shisui- Out, out, brief candle.


**Characters**: Itachi, Shisui**  
Summary**: Out, out, brief candle.**  
Pairings**: None**  
Author's Note**: The quote is taken from Macbeth.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Naruto.

* * *

Uchiha Shisui dies at sixteen, falls into the water at the hand of the growing darkness spawning inside of his cousin. Itachi's darkness has swallowed Shisui whole more effectively than the river ever could, taking him in and not letting anything out. What's been growing in the younger since the day he was approached by elders cloaked in shadow has gone unseen until today.

And after today, everything starts to fall apart.

Night falls quickly and Itachi returns to the heart of the Uchiha compound alone, though no one notices at first. He returns with the long shadows of evening and doesn't take supper, instead sequestering himself in his bare room with its low window and locking the door, not listening when sharp raps come and go on the wood.

His thoughts consume him the way the river and his burgeoning darkness did Shisui.

-0-

It is summer, and the thunderstorm that comes after the sun crashes is neither earth-shattering nor clamorous. There is no bright, nearby lightning to leave stark white scars on the sky, nor the cacophonous chorus of thunder at full swing. Instead, the thunder is light, muted footsteps on the celestial floor, and in the deep blue twilight the rain falls like an opaque sheet across everything and shelters Itachi from the world that doesn't know yet.

The room is a haven for shadows, with its lack of any furnishing save the tatami mat, a place where they can gather freely. Itachi sits, languid and listless, against the wall, cheek pressed up against the window (where little fog clouds condense on the glass), katana resting on his knees ready to spring into action but for now just as imp and stationary as its owner.

His eyes keep flicking back to the dark, stretching hollow of a mouth of the gate, as if expecting to spy a wavering shadow flowing through the river of night, back towards the center of all darkness here.

Really, Itachi expects to see Shisui coming back through the gates, gently loping canter adding grace to his swaying figure.

_But Shisui is dead. Itachi remembers, remembers everything that happened and even some things that didn't happen. There's a crowd forming around him, invisible faces staring up at him wanting to know the next course of action and all he can do is stare out the window and wonder when Shisui is going to come home, even though he's dead._

Itachi decided long ago that Shisui's last words would be a joke. That the boy would go out smiling and laughing and giving hell to whoever killed him, any way he could. Well, the last part's true, at least—_Itachi can't get the image out of his mind, of water wrapping over Shisui like a straitjacket or a funereal shroud, the thought burned into his retinas_—but the rest is not.

Shisui did not laugh as he died.

Shisui did not smile as he died.

_One blink and Itachi is transported back through the rain and the gentle dusk-twilight to a blazing afternoon devoid of rain and storm clouds._

_Shisui seems slightly strained as he blinks, long eyelashes dusting over pale cheeks, and stares more closely at him, as if trying to x-ray him, peel back all those layers of skin and see the truth._

_And the look in Shisui's eyes makes Itachi afraid. Because it's almost as if he already knows the truth. Like Shisui's used his jutsu not to control him but to read him, and Itachi can't have that. He can't have that. Not from anyone. Not even from Shisui._

_A black claw of horror stokes the fire crackling and bursting in his stomach as Itachi does his work. Shisui struggles and screams silently, hands gnashing at the wall of water enclosing his flesh like a dog trying to reach the surface of the river. He writhes like a snake, and his screams can't be heard by anyone, are mute even to Itachi._

_Then, his head snaps back and forward, mouth forming soundless words. His eyes snap open and—_

_Itachi quails in mute horror, but can't tear his own eyes away. Shisui has one moment left before all goes to black for him and he spends it well—bright black irises stare into Itachi's flesh and straight through, the number of things Itachi can see there astounding him._

_Shisui has never begged anyone for anything a day in his life except in dark and haunted corners of memory that Itachi doesn't like to remember, can't bring himself to recall, and Shisui is pleading for his life now with the most eloquent instrument of all—his expressive black eyes._

"_I can't do that, I can't do that," Itachi mouths over and over again, useless and helpless. "If you know anything at all then you have to know I can't do that."_

_You'll never know how much I want to let go, Itachi almost says, but never does._

These are the things Itachi is starting to miss about Shisui even though he's not been dead six hours.

The laugh he thought annoying. The smile he thought too bright, too blinding, too dazzling for its own good—Shisui was always too good with people, too good with Itachi, too able to charm and dazzle and disarm, even to the point that Itachi thought he could just be… _normal_, with Shisui around. _As if he could ever be normal, even with Shisui._

He misses the way Shisui would call him otouto from time to time to annoy him, even though Shisui was doing that less and less as the years went down and they got older and formed the bodies of adults. Even though Itachi didn't miss it when Shisui was alive, he misses it now that he's dead.

Just like he misses everything else about Shisui.

_It's over almost before it begins. It takes minutes and minutes that seem like an eternity to Itachi but really it's just eight minutes, twenty-one seconds, and Shisui isn't fighting anymore. His heart isn't fighting anymore—it's given up even when its wearer didn't want to die. In the end, Shisui's heart is smarter than he is and it knows it has to give up._

_As Itachi watches the cooling corn husk shell that was formerly his cousin rolling down into the sluggish depths of the Nakano River, he thinks he can hear Shisui's laugh shining off the water. _

_He thinks he can hear it rippling, but it's just a kingfisher, disturbed and flying away in a flutter of blue-green feathers, only witness to death this day._

_But Itachi can still hear it, dogging him as he makes his return, running for the shadows to find a safe place to hide._

The rain's a little harder now. It's still a gentle murmur, like a crowd far away or across the barrier of a rice paper wall, shining silver off the cobblestone path. Itachi watches, and finds his thoughts drawn irresistibly to blowflies and maggots.

What will Shisui look like when he's found?

Itachi wants him to still be his handsome, smiling self but it might be several days and several days is what Itachi needs to erase all traces that might somehow still exist. When several days have passed in the river, Shisui won't be that handsome teenager anymore.

Instead, he'll be distended and disfigured, a revolting, bloated form, safe haven for creatures of decay to chew on and destroy from the inside out. The thought of the smell of decay is enough to make bile start to gnaw on the inside of Itachi's throat, but nothing comes up because he hasn't eaten in a day and a half and Itachi is just left to wonder, and wonder, and feel sick on emptiness.

The rain sounds like footsteps on the roof. Itachi never noticed before now.

His eyes bore into the night darkness creeping after him, trying to engulf him. Shisui always loved the rain. Itachi does not. It reminds him too much of chlorine gas and the sound of nin drowning with no water around them, clawing at their throats for air they can't find anywhere. Shisui might have been able to forget, but Itachi never will.

A slow spark of irritation shoots at this point. _When is Shisui coming home?_

Then, Itachi remembers that Shisui is dead and that the dead can't walk home.

But he still tells himself that Shisui will be along soon. It's a comforting thought.

He'll sit up for him, Itachi decides. He doesn't normally do such sentimental, foolish things, but he thinks it will be alright, just once. Shisui will tease him about it later but it still makes him feel better that he'll be able to see Shisui come home, for once.

_Itachi sits his vigil late into the night but eventually exhaustion overcomes him and he falls to sleep._

_In the morning, he wakes up with his mother holding his head to her chest and stroking his hair soothingly, rocking him back and forth like she used to when he was a small child and shushing him gently._

_Mikoto has been trying to muffle Itachi's screams so no one else can hear, as he protests again and again while sleeping that Shisui is walking around on the roof._


End file.
